Maintenance of a sterile field is critical in surgical applications. Conforming a surgical drape to the patient is of considerable importance, as evidence by the number of issued patents directed to drape configuration and arrangement, let alone the number of commercially available drapes.
In ophthalmic procedures, it is advantageous to apply a surgical drape which permits isolation of the eye lashes and eyelids from the surgical site in furtherance of exposure of the eye, and provides a sterile drape surface to minimize infection at the site. Such is the case in refractive surgery wherein draping may be primarily performed to retract the eyelids and lashes from the surface of the eye, thereby keeping those structures clear of surgical instruments such as microkeratomes. As practitioners have come to learn, manipulation of eye structures in furtherance of ophthalmic surgery, while maintaining a sterile field, is not without its inherent and practical difficulties.
As the eye is a delicate structure, with the eyelids being very flexible and of unique configuration and dimension from one patient to the next, practitioners find it inconvenient and challenging to conform the margins of the aperture to the edges of a particular patient's eyelids. This however does not mean a one size fits all approach is taken, instead, one know technique is to cut the drape, at least partly and especially to extend outward from the aperture, prior to applying same to the patient. By doing this, tension is relieved in stressed or stretched areas (i.e., resulting from substantially conforming the aperture margins to the eye structures), and bunching of the adhesive field/layer avoided. Furthermore, cutting the drape prior to application facilitates application of the drape first, for instance, to the upper eyelid, without adhering the lower portions of the adhesive layer to the lower eyelid until ready to do so. In addition to the general inconvenience of requiring the presence of a sterile scissor or the like, making an appropriate cut while attempting to preserve drape sterility is not necessarily achievable.
In lieu of practitioners cutting the drape as they had been inclined to do, drape designers next provided drapes having tear lines extending from the aperture so as satisfy objectives of conforming the drape to the surgical site (i.e., matching the margins of the aperture to the edges of the eyelids), and facilitating sequenced placement (i.e., positioning on a first eyelid, followed by positioning on a second eyelid). Such approach is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,286,511 (Levitt et al.). Furthermore, drapes have been supplied in sections (i.e., halves), with each part of the whole separately and accurately applied to the patient. Although such styles or approaches have been perceived as an improvement, both require an attention to detail than makes application of the drape more time consuming that one might imagine, especially the two-piece style, with drapes having a tear line nonetheless requiring manipulation by a practitioner (i.e., tearing). Thus there remains a need to provide an apertured surgical drape which is quickly and readily applied so as to establish and reliably maintain a sterile field about the work site.